China

Twitchy captures a classic 2012 tweet of Obama OPM Director Katherine Archuleta, the nominal leader of an agency that has now been the victim of two Pearl Harbor-size hacks by President Obama’s Chinese friends. Archuleta’s tweet is the digital equivalent of an exploding cigar. Twitchy comments: Today’s a busy day for those pointing and laughing at the people who mocked presidential candidate Mitt Romney over his warnings about Chinese hackers »

While everyone was getting on his Great American Barbecue yesterday for the July 4th holiday and awaiting the Greek referendum today, the Chinese stock market was crashing again. It’s down 12 percent over the last week, almost 30 percent in the last month. Tyler Cowen is on it, with a simple message: Greece is small; China is large. Uh oh. From behind the FT’s paywall: The Shanghai index is firmly »

A series of alarming data breaches over the last two years have cast doubt on our government’s competence with regard to cyber warfare. Glenn Reynolds writes about the most recent instance in USA Today: “Hackers linked to China have gained access to the sensitive background information submitted by intelligence and military personnel for security clearances, U.S. officials said Friday, describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged.” »

Chinese hackers have invaded computers at the federal Office of Personnel Management, accessing personal information relating to at least four million current and former government employees. The New York Times reports: The Obama administration on Thursday announced what appeared to be one of the largest breaches of federal employees’ data, involving at least four million current and former government workers in an intrusion that officials said apparently originated in China. »

Omri Ceren promises a report on House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Iran yesterday, with attention to the $50 billion signing bonus President Obama has in store for acquiring the signature of the Supreme Leader’s representatives on the arrangement in process with Iran. The $50 billion will come in handy as the Iranians finance their nuclear program and support their good works in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere in »

I have a good friend who is a venture capitalist and travels frequently to Asia. We had lunch together a week or two ago, when he had just returned from a trip to Indonesia, Hong Kong, China and Vietnam. What he wanted to talk about was Vietnam. He is excited about its prospects: the population is remarkably young (unlike China’s and Japan’s) and the country is wide open to development, »

Seen on the Twitter feed of (New York Times reporter) Chris Buckley, retweeted by (New York Times reporter) Peter Baker. I’m taking the liberty of passing it on without further comment. Mao's grandson has that certain something: http://t.co/i6Mun969oc pic.twitter.com/jbDBzaduvb — Chris Buckley 储百亮 (@ChuBailiang) March 10, 2014 »

Beating up on the inanities of Tom Friedman is about as hard as falling out a first floor window, and there’s an entire catalogue of Power Line entries to prove it. (Here’s his Green Weenie, for example.) But like taking out the recycling, somebody’s got to do it. Today Friedman departs slightly from his favorite “China-Is-Awesome” theme to write critically of China for a change. And what, pray tell, has »

Through the post-war era, and especially after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has been the guarantor of something approximating peace in the Middle East. The U.S. accepted that role largely because of its need for Middle Eastern oil imports. But times have changed: domestic energy development, especially fracking technology, unleashed on private lands beyond the reach of the Democratic Party’s Luddites, is rapidly turning the United »

Let’s review the climate diplomacy story so far. The elephant in the room at the UN negotiations has always been China, India, and other developing nations who have steadfastly refused to agree to future limits on their use of affordable hydrocarbon energy, which they rightly see as the path to becoming fully middle class nations as we and Europe did. The Chinese told Al Gore in Kyoto in 1997 when »

You may recall that back in the late 1980s, lots of certified smart people like James Fallows and Clyde Prestowitz were telling us that Japan was eating our lunch in terms of economic policy, because they had embraced the kind of government-led industrial policy that used to put a spring in Walter Mondale’s step. It was confidently predicted that at the present rate, Japan might well overtake the United States »

The New York Times announced today that its systems have been hacked by the Chinese over a period of months: For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems… Here comes the key bit: and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees. So that explains Tom Friedman’s columns! We probably should apologize for believing Friedman was dumb enough to consider »

If you can’t beat ’em, buy ’em. That may be the philosophy behind the proposed takeover of much of Taiwan’s free press by a mainland Chinese company that is conspicuous for its loyalty to the Communist Party: Americans everywhere should at least be aware of the disaster that’s about to happen to democratic Taiwan’s media market. Taiwan’s most popular and independent media organization, Next Media, is about to be sold »

More than a decade’s worth of advanced American technology is about to be handed to the Chinese at a creditors’ sale. Democrat Ike Skelton, chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee from 2007 to 2010 and Republican Duncan Hunter, chairman of the same Committee from 2002 to 2006, urge the government to move quickly to prevent this hand-over. The technology in question consists of advanced lithium-iron phosphate batteries. According »

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has a recurring daydream. In Friedman’s daydream the United States adopts the highly efficient Chinese Communist mode of government under the leadership of “a reasonably enlightened group of people” — such as Friedman finds the Chinese Communists to be. Friedman finds enlightenment among the Chinese Communists in their collective pursuit of “electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.” GE »

I loved John’s demonstration of Tom Friedman’s ignorance of Minnesota politics which I consider one of the best Power Line posts in recent memory. John’s takedown of Friedman included, among other gems, this: Friedman’s suggestion that in the 1950s and 1960s Minnesota Republicans were all liberals is absurd. Minnesota Congressmen of the era included rock-ribbed conservative Al Quie, John Zwach, who headed the Conservative Caucus as a member of the »

It’s been a while since we last updated the “China: Don’t Look Now, But. . .” series (you can find the previous three installments here, here, and here), but a terrific op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal by Joseph Sternberg suggests that China has finally succumbed to the “greater fool” theory, as evidenced by its recent decision to buy A123 Systems, the ailing, Obama-backed (which means taxpayer-backed) car battery company »